Displaying items by tag: asteroid

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001. 

On Monday, 12 February 2001, the NEAR spacecraft touched down on asteroid Eros, after transmitting 69 close-up images of the surface during its final descent. 

Deep Space Industries (DSI) is an American company created with the objective to mine asteroids for metals and other materials.

DSI believes the human race is ready to begin harvesting the resources of space.  DSI Mission is the following: to build on the heritage of the first age of space exploration and harness the power of a new age of information to locate, explore, harvest and utilize the vast numbers of asteroids in Earth's community.  Deep Space Industries is playing the long game and will position itself to be the leader in space resource harvesting and utilization by developing a carefully planned track record of capability, credibility and expertise.

The B612 Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to protecting the Earth from asteroid strikes. Their immediate goal is to "significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015".

The Sentinel program (space telescope) is the cornerstone of the Foundation's efforts (in Nov.2012).

The foundation was established in October 2002. It is named for the home asteroid of the eponymous hero of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. Financial contributions to the B612 Foundation are tax-exempt. The foundation principal offices are in Mountain View, California, USA.

Planetary Resources Inc. is an American company based in Washington, USA.

Planetary Resources, Inc.'s goal is to "expand Earth's natural resource base" by developing and deploying the technologies for asteroid mining. 

Though the long-term goal of the company is to mine asteroids, its initial plans call for developing a market for small (30–50 kg) cost-reduced space telescopes for both Earth observation and astronomy.

It is was formed in November 2010 (formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics), reorganized and renamed in 2012.

Hayabusa (はやぶさ^?, literally "Peregrine Falcon") was an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis.

Hayabusa, formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendez-vous-ed with the asteroid Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, colour, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of asteroidal material, which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on 13 June 2010.

A huge asteroid about the size of an aircraft carrier will zoom past our planet next week, flying between the Earth and the orbit of the moon when it flies by on Tuesday (Nov. 8).